The Darwin-Hecker hypothesis, viz. that laughter induced by tickling and humor share common underlying mechanisms, is so-called in part because of a quotation attributed to Ewald Hecker. However, a German counterpart of the quotation does not appear in the location cited. Some textual sleuthing is undertaken to find out what Hecker actually wrote and where he wrote it.

According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (‘PSR’), every fact has an explanation for why it obtains. If the PSR is true, there must be a sufficient reason for why God chose to create our world. But a sufficient reason for God’s choice plausibly necessitates that choice. It thus seems that God could not have done otherwise, and that our world exists necessarily. We therefore appear forced to pick between the PSR, and the contingency of creation and divine choice. I (...) show that a third option remains open, and thus that it is possible to preserve the contingency of creation and divine choice even while endorsing the PSR. My solution depends on the coherence of a restricted modal realism. On this modal realism, there is more than one possible morally optimal created world, and for each such world there is an existing possibility in which God creates that world. -/- . (shrink)

Variable-Value axiologies propose solutions to the challenges of population ethics. These views avoid Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion, while satisfying some weak instances of the Mere Addition principle (for example, at small population sizes). We apply calibration methods to Variable-Value views while assuming: first, some very weak instances of Mere Addition, and, second, some plausible empirical assumptions about the size and welfare of the intertemporal world population. We find that Variable-Value views imply conclusions that should seem repugnant to anyone who opposes Total (...) Utilitarianism due to the Repugnant Conclusion. So, any wish to avoid repugnant conclusions is not a good reason to choose a Variable-Value view. More broadly, these calibrations teach us something about the effort to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion. Our results join a recent literature arguing that prior efforts to avoid the Repugnant Conclusion hinge on inessential features of the formalization of repugnance. Some of this effort may therefore be misplaced. (shrink)

We motivate and develop a perspectival A-theory of time (future/present/past) and probe its implied interpretation of quantum mechanics. It will emerge that, as a first take, the time of relativity is a B-series (earlier-times to later-times) and the time of quantum mechanics is an A-series. There is philosophical motivation for the idea that mutual quantum measurement happens when and only when the systems’ A-series become one mutual A-series, as in the way qualia work in the Inverted Spectrum. This seems to (...) account for certain quantum phenomena, including that the electrons of a Bell pair do not have definite spins until measurement, as ‘until’ here is a (perspectival) A-series notion. Various issues in the foundations of quantum mechanics are canvassed. (shrink)

After the 2016 election of Donald Trump, many commentators latched on to the accusations Rorty levels at the American Left in Achieving Our Country. Rorty foresaw, they claimed, that the Left's preoccupation with cultural politics and neglect of class politics would lead to the election of a "strongman" who would take advantage of and exploit a rise in populist sentiment. -/- In this paper, I generally agree with these readings of Rorty; he does think that the American Left has made (...) the mistake of putting class on the political backburner. However, I suggest that this position follows from his view that economic security is vital for solidarity. Because economic security is under increasing threat in contemporary America, so too is solidarity. If greater solidarity is a goal of liberal democracy, then class politics, aimed at ending selfishness, ought to be as much a priority for the American Left as is cultural politics, aimed at ending sadism. (shrink)

This paper examines an argument by Schaffer that aims to prove how, contrary to what many philosophers hold, there is no special explanatory gap occurring in the connection between the physical and the phenomenal. This is because a gap of the same kind can be found in every connection between a more fundamental and a less fundamental level of reality. These gaps lurk everywhere in nature. For Schaffer, they can be bridged by means of substantive metaphysical principles such as grounding (...) principles. He thus puts forward a version of grounding-based physicalism, which is supposed to provide this kind of substantive bridge principle. My main contention is as follows: even if Schaffer’s argument indeed proves the existence of a gap in every connection between fundamental and derivative entities, and that such gaps can be bridged by means of grounding principles, a different gap remains open in the psycho-physical connection. (shrink)

Luận văn với đề tài “Nghiên cứu tác động của cơ cấu vốn đến khả năng trả nợ của các doanh nghiệp vay vốn tại Ngân hàng Thương mại Cổ phần Ngoại thương Việt Nam – CN Nam Hà Nội” bao gồm 03 chương với tóm tắt kết quả nghiên cứu như sau: Thứ nhất, luận văn đã trình bày rõ các khái niệm về cơ cấu vốn và khả năng trả nợ. Bên cạnh đó, luận văn cũng đưa ra (...) lý thuyết tổng quan về đánh giá khả năng trả nợ và các yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng trả nợ. Các nghiên cứu về khả năng trả nợ cũng được luận bàn tóm tắt trong luận văn. Thứ hai, luận văn đã mô tả thực trạng hoạt động tại Vietcombank Chi nhánh Nam Hà Nội. Ngoài ra luận văn cũng đưa ra mô hình nghiên cứu đánh giá khả năng trả nợ của các khách hàng vay vốn tại Vietcombank Chi nhánh Nam Hà Nội và trình bày kết quả nghiên cứu. Thứ ba, từ những nghiên cứu lý luận và thực tiễn, luận văn đã đưa ra hàm ý từ kết quả nghiên cứu và một số đề xuất, kiến nghị đối với nội bộ Vietcombank và một số tổ chức khác như Ngân hàng nhà nước, các cơ quan pháp luật và các doanh nghiệp. Đồng thời luận văn cũng đã chỉ ra các hạn chế của đề tài và đề xuất hướng nghiên cứu tiếp theo. (shrink)

Review of Roger Gibson, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Quine.

Logic-Based Therapy is a proposed modality of philosophical counseling developed by philosopher Elliot D. Cohen beginning in the mid-1980s. This Socratic dialogue illustrates the techniques used by Philosophical Counselors in helping their clients work through life problems. Philosophical Counseling is based on Stoic Philosophy and practitioners assist clients to identify faulty reasoning that leads to poor behavioral choices or unwanted emotions. Dialogues such as this can serve as teaching resources for students working towards certification in Practical Philosophy or Philosophical Counseling.

The supposition that Wittgenstein's Tractatus advances a certain metaphysics has given rise to a controversy over the ontological status of his Tractarian objects. It has been debated, for instance, whether these objects consist only of particulars or of both particulars and universals; whether they are physical, phenomenal, or phenomenological entities; and whether they correspond to Russell's objects of acquaintance or Kant's phenomena and substance. In this essay, I endorse Ishiguro's view that these objects, being formal concepts, are ontologically neutral and (...) thus are not identifiable with any ontological kind of entities. I elaborate on the coherence of this view with the propositional dependence of the meaning of Tractarian names. After showing why some arguments for ascribing a Russellian theory of meaning to these names do not work, I demonstrate why Ishiguro's account of Tractarian objects and names provides a better explanation of the unalterability of these objects. (shrink)

This paper defends an account of moral shock as an emotional response to intensely bewildering events that are also of moral significance. This theory stands in contrast to the common view that shock is a form of intense surprise. On the standard model of surprise, surprise is an emotional response to events that violated one’s expectations. But I show that we can be morally shocked by events that confirm our expectations. What makes an event shocking is not that it violated (...) one’s expectations, but that the content of the event is intensely bewildering (and bewildering events are often, but not always, contrary to our expectations). What causes moral shock is, I argue, our lack of emotional preparedness for the event. And I show that, despite the relative lack of attention to shock in the philosophical literature, the emotion is significant to moral, social, and political life. (shrink)

Adi Shankara is regarded as the greatest philosopher and spiritual leader in the very long history of India and one of the most influential thought leaders in world history. Estimates vary as to when he lived, with scholars placing it at 788-820 C.E. According to Shankara, there is only One Being, which is beyond language and thought because it is ultimate, infinite and all-pervasive. Being spiritual, this One Being is pure consciousness, unlike our normal consciousness which always requires subject-object duality. (...) The One Being is non-dual, being one without a second. Shankara’s concept of One Being strikes intuitively true to many, though it sounds narcissistic to a few. Shankara presents a strong rationale in its support and outlines a whole life path to reach the One Being in actual experience. As a concept One Being is a rational alternative to the traditional idea of God viewed as a divine person. Its spirituality is a constructive alternative to the atheist’s mere denial of God. This book, One Being, by Ramesh N. Patel, describes and explores Adi Shankara’s spiritual path and its supporting philosophy in an accessible and intelligible way for the serious modern reader interested in this challenging but highly rewarding subject. The reader is taken step by step through Shankara’s life, work, nature of knowledge, reality, life ethics, karma and details of the spiritual path of knowledge. In today's strife torn and bipolarized times, One Being is all the more relevant for its obvious potential as a spiritual healer bringing a harmonious message of unity in diversity. Ramesh N. Patel was Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Antioch College where he taught for twenty-five years, retiring in 2002. Since then he has been teaching voluntary classes in Bhagavad-gita, Upanishads, Vedic philosophy and Spiritual Studies. He is the author of Philosophy of the Gita and of Hinduism for Today. (shrink)

The global COVID-19 pandemic has spotlighted several instances of churches violating state issued and scientifically recommended guidelines designed to keep populations healthy and to prevent the further spread of the disease. While these instances are minority responses to these orders, they nonetheless raise questions about the rationality of ecclesial belonging in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, I draw on the work of William James and W. E. B. Du Bois to articulate a conception of ecclesial belonging as (...) a social epistemological process engaging a complex, fluid multiplicity of knowers of various scales. I argue that, in this view, ecclesial rationality involves the construction of a concatenation of internal and external practices individual believers and groups can traverse so long as they consistently satisfy a plurality of desiderata. I suggest that what is irrational about religious-based defiance of COVID-19 guidelines is the church-sanctioned severance of internal from external practices. I suggest that this behavior is supported by a failure to grasp the demands of ecclesial rationality rather than embrace them, and that this conception of rationality may have been eroded by the value-neutral skepticism of secular rationality. (shrink)

One major aim of the book is to articulate a view of the mechanics of infallible divine foreknowledge that avoids commitment to causal determinism, explains how infallible foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom, and explains how God’s divine providence is compatible with human freedom and indeterministic events. The modest epistemic goal is to articulate a view that enjoys a not very low epistemic status. But even with such modest goals, I think the view cannot credibly be said to offer or (...) . In fact, at critical moments when and are in question, we find very little detailed discussion.There is another epistemological goal in the book. It is to show that we are not in an epistemic position to know that causal determinism provides the basis for explaining how God knows the future and so we are not in a position to know that God’s infallible foreknowledge is incompatible with human freedom . But if infallible foreknow .. (shrink)

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In philosophy of mind, zombies are imaginary creatures that are exact physical duplicates of conscious subjects but for whom there is no first-personal experience. Zombies are meant to show that physicalism—the theory that the universe is made up entirely out of physical components—is false. In this paper, I apply the zombie thought experiment to the realm of morality to assess whether moral agency is something independent from sentience. Algorithms, I argue, are a kind of functional moral zombie, such that thinking (...) about the latter can help us better understand and regulate the former. I contend that the main reason why algorithms can be neither autonomous nor accountable is that they lack sentience. Moral zombies and algorithms are incoherent as moral agents because they lack the necessary moral understanding to be morally responsible. To understand what it means to inflict pain on someone, it is necessary to have experiential knowledge of pain. At most, for an algorithm that feels nothing, ‘values’ will be items on a list, possibly prioritised in a certain way according to a number that represents weightiness. But entities that do not feel cannot value, and beings that do not value cannot act for moral reasons. (shrink)

Abstract: Juhani Yli-Vakkuri and John Hawthorne have recently presented a thought experiment—Mirror Man—designed to refute internalist theories of belief and content. We distinguish five ways in which the case can be interpreted and argue that on none does it refute internalism.

In the Foundations of Mathematics, Ramsey attempted to amend Principia Mathematica’s logicism to meet serious objections raised against it. While Ramsey’s paper is well known, some questions concerning Ramsey’s motivations to write it and its reception still remain. This paper considers these questions afresh. First, an account is provided for why Ramsey decided to work on his paper instead of simply accepting Wittgenstein’s account of mathematics as presented in the Tractatus. Secondly, evidence is given supporting that Wittgenstein was not moved (...) by Ramsey’s objection against the Tractarian account of arithmetic, and a suggestion is made to explain why Wittgenstein reconsidered Ramsey’s account in the early thirties on several occasions. Finally, a reading is formulated to understand the basis on which Wittgenstein argues against Ramsey’s definition of identity in his 1927 letter to Ramsey. (shrink)

Since the publication of the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Wittgenstein’s interpreters have endeavored to reconcile his general constructivist/anti-realist attitude towards mathematics with his confessed anti-revisionary philosophy. In this article, the author revisits the issue and presents a solution. The basic idea consists in exploring the fact that the so-called “non-constructive results” could be interpreted so that they do not appear non-constructive at all. The author substantiates this solution by showing how the translation of mathematical results, given by the (...) possibility of translation between logics, can be seen as a tool for partially implementing the solution Wittgenstein had in mind. (shrink)

Review of Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude.

Les modèles d'intelligence émotionnelle ont aidé à développer différents outils d'évaluation des constructs. Chaque paradigme théorique conceptualise l'intelligence émotionnelle selon l'une des deux perspectives : habilité ou modèle mixte. Les modèles d’habilités considèrent l'intelligence émotionnelle comme une pure forme d'habilité mentale et donc comme une pure intelligence. Les modèles mixtes d'intelligence émotionnelle combinent l'habilité mentale avec les traits de personnalité. Les modèles de traits de l'intelligence émotionnelle se réfèrent aux perceptions individuelles de leurs propres habilités émotionnelles. Il existe des similitudes (...) théoriques et statistiques entre les différents modèles d'intelligence émotionnelle. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.22313.52323. (shrink)

The dynamics of migration in a globalized world are rooted in the theme of globalization, i.e., free movement of people and goods, and migration in Africa is a response to this. This paper approaches the dynamics of migration from the perspective of globalization and analyzes the themes, principles, impacts, and benefits of globalization. The analysis shows that notwithstanding the triggering factors of migration in a globalized world, globalization, directly and indirectly, facilitates migration in Africa. Regardless of the types of migration (...) and the status of migrants, the dynamics of migration in Africa is linked with globalization and its core theme of free movement of capital and cheap labor force. In this regard, the paper aims to examine the implications of the dynamics of migration in a globalized world for Africa which suggests that the merit and demerit analysis of globalization and migration has to be taken into account to which the African Union (AU hereafter), African states, and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs hereafter) should play significant roles. (shrink)

Judgments of visual resemblance (‘A looks like B’), unlike other judgments of resemblance, are often induced directly by visual experience. What is the nature of this experience? We argue that the visual experience that prompts a subject looking at A to judge that A looks like B is a visual experience of B. After elucidating this thesis, we defend it, using the ‘phenomenal contrast’ method. Comparing our account to competing accounts, we show that the phenomenal contrast between a visual experience (...) that induces the judgment that A looks like B, and a visual experience that does not induce this judgment, is best explained by the fact that the former visually represents B, whereas the latter does not. (shrink)

Part of a book forum on Ato Sekyi-Otu's 'Left Universalism, Africacentric Essays' with a response by the author.

This book seeks to offer original answers to all the major open questions in epistemology—as indicated by the book’s title. These questions and answers arise organically in the course of a validation of the entire corpus of human knowledge. The book explains how we know what we know, and how well we know it. The author presents a positive theory, motivated and directed at every step not by a need to reply to skeptics or subjectivists, but by the need of (...) a rational individual to know the world. -/- The author draws heavily from Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts as presented in her book, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, but departs from her epistemology—especially as explicated by leading exponents of her philosophy—in important ways. Areas of departure include the perception of entities and the role of probability theory in epistemology. -/- A main idea in the book is to begin the validation of the law of causality by identifying that existence causes our consciousness of it. Another key idea is this: The very fact that we perceive entities is the most basic and most extensive evidence that causal forces and causal interactions are regular. -/- Applying Ayn Rand’s principle that characteristics are ranges of measurement, the book offers a philosophical validation of “nonparametric predictive inference,” in turn providing an objective basis for prior probabilities in Bayesian analysis. -/- This book is primarily for a specialized readership—familiar with epistemological ideas and with Ayn Rand’s theory of concepts in particular. The last third of the book uses probability theory and mathematics somewhat beyond basic calculus, but less mathematical explanations are also included to make the general ideas accessible to lay readers. (shrink)

In this paper, I explain the kinematics of non-ideal metalinguistic disagreement. This occurs when one speaker has greater control in the joint activity of pairing contents with words in a context. I argue that some forms of non-ideal metalinguistic disagreement are deeply worrying, namely those that involves certain power imbalances. In such cases, a speaker possesses illegitimate control in metalinguistic disagreement owing to the operation of identity prejudice. I call this metalinguistic injustice. The wrong involves restricting a speaker from participating (...) in the processes that determine the epistemic/linguistic resources of a conversation, and/or undermining a speaker’s ability to affect metalinguistic outcomes. (shrink)

This paper engages two debates about trust, deriving from two distinct questions about the nature of trust. The first asks how to define trust. Does trusting B to φ involve anything more than relying on B to φ? The second asks about the normative structure of trust. Does trust most fundamentally embody a two-place or a three-place relation? I’ll defend a new position in the second debate that yields an equally new position in the first. The standard three-place model highlights (...) ‘A trusts B to φ.’ The two-place model prefers ‘A trusts B.’ On my new three-place model, both are less fundamental than ‘A φs through trust in B.’ We do, of course, trust people to do things. But the most fundamental form of trust lies in doing something through trust in a person. I call this the Assurance View of trust because I’ll argue that trusting involves accepting another’s invitation to trust – an assurance, in effect, that the other is relevantly trustworthy. Trust thereby differs from mere reliance by how it makes available a reason to rely on the trusted. In mere reliance, your reason to rely on B is exogenous to the reliance relation, emerging, for example, from B’s track record of relevant reliability. When you trust B, by contrast, you take yourself to have a reason to rely on B that is endogenous to your trust, a reason grounded not merely in B’s reliability, exogenously considered, but in B’s ongoing responsiveness to your relevant needs. The Assurance View’s key insight emerges, I’ll argue, from cases wherein trust is disappointed – the trusted does not do what you trusted her to do – yet not thereby betrayed. (shrink)

[This draft is dated November 2007. I wrote it while I was a fellow at the Center for 21st Century Studies at UW-Milwaukee, in 2005-06, and published it only on the Center's website as a working paper. Many of the core ideas in this paper wound up in "Receptivity and the Will," Nous 2009, "Assertion, Sincerity, and Knowledge," Nous 2013, and "Assurance and Warrant," Philosophers' Imprint 2014 -- though formulated rather differently. What follows is the original abstract.] This working paper (...) extends a project that I’ve been developing for several years on the role of trust, including self-trust, in rationality and personal autonomy. I’m interested equally in epistemic questions (what to believe) and in practical questions (how to act), though the present paper addresses only the former. In an earlier paper on the epistemic side of my project, “Telling as Inviting to Trust” (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, May 2005), I offered an explanation of how you can get an entitlement to believe something simply by trusting someone when she tells you it’s so, the entitlement deriving not merely from the assurance but from the trustworthy character of the one who gives it. The present paper adapts my explanation of believing-on-another’s-word to belief as such, via the observation that you can’t form a belief without trusting someone’s judgment – if only your own. I view intrapersonal reasoning about what to believe as an internalization of the interpersonal cases I analyzed in that earlier paper. In each instance, belief-formation has a second-personal dynamic: an invitation to trust on one side, trusting acceptance of that invitation on the other. If I’m right, the dynamic at the heart of all belief manifests not autonomy but a trusting heteronomy, whereby you render yourself appropriately receptive to judgment – your own or another’s. (The idea that judging is inviting self-trust first occurred to me in 2002, but I didn’t get a chance to develop it properly till 2005-06, my fellowship year at the Center for 21st Century Studies. I appreciate the support.). (shrink)

This paper treats two questions about the relation between trust and the will. One question, about trust, is whether you can trust ‘at will.’ Can you trust despite acknowledging that you lack evidence of the trustee’s worthiness of your trust? Another question, about the will, is whether you can exercise your will at all without trust – at least, in yourself. I treat the second question as a guide to the first, arguing that the role of trust in the will (...) reveals how you can trust at will. The key lies in distinguishing two ways of being responsive to evidence. On the one hand, you cannot trust someone – whether another person or your own earlier self – whom you judge unworthy of your trust. On the other hand, trust does not require a positive assessment of trustworthiness. I thus take issue with Pamela Hieronymi’s analysis of trust as a “commitment-constituted attitude.” Your trust is indeed constrained by your responsiveness to evidence of untrustworthiness, but you need undertake no commitment akin to or involving a judgment that the trustee is trustworthy. We can see why trust is not a commitment-constituted attitude by seeing how trust itself plays a role in forming a commitment. (shrink)

A half-century of Rawls interpreters have overemphasized economic equality in A Theory of Justice, slighting liberty—the central value of liberalism—in the process. From luck-egalitarian readings of Rawls to more recent claims that Rawls was a “reticent socialist,” these interpretations have obscured Rawls’s identity as a philosopher of freedom. They have also obscured the perhaps surprising fact that Rawlsian liberties (basic and non-basic) restrain and even undermine that same economic equality. As I will show in this article, such undermining occurs in (...) three areas: first, in the lexical priority of the basic liberties; second, in the (underappreciated) role played by free and competitive markets in Rawls’s theory; and third, in the structure and functioning of Rawls’s preferred economic institutions, viz., liberal socialism and property-owning democracy. (shrink)

We develop a series of theses on the philosophical aesthetics of design art. A sketch of an outline of a theory of objects is drawn from within a naturalistic worldview, that of abstract materialism and the general, still ongoing, quest to build a comprehensive philosophy of nature encompassing not only the physical world, but also culture, art, and politics.

After the collapse of the Hegelian philosophy, many thinkers returned to the main principles of Kantian transcendentalism. In this way, they initiated the neo-kantian movement. Wilhelm Dilthey was among them. Nevertheless, only in spirit can his “Critique of the Historical Reason” be called neo-kantian. In fact, the core of Dilthey’s project, the “Categories of Life”, is a completely new gnoseological proposal, that mediates between transcendental philosophy and empiricism.

L’Exercitium academicum circa praescientiam daemonum (1666), pubblicato nella riformata Jena, tematizza una questione dibattuta nella Scolastica fra XIII e XIV secolo ma le cui radici risalgono ad Agostino d'Ippona, cui si deve il primo testo sull'argomento: la prescienza dei demoni. L'analisi segue la traccia del De divinatione daemonum agostiniano, mentre appare critica nei confronti delle posizioni di Tommaso d'Aquino e dei tomisti. Ad esse, in particolare riguardo alla natura delle facoltà intellettive demoniche, egli contrappone Giovanni Duns Scoto, Durando di san (...) Porziano e non meglio specificati nominales, accomunati in un indistinto riferimento alla teoria delle species. Ciò non toglie che il testo segua poi Tommaso nell'articolazione delle forme di prescienza dei demoni e nella definizione di questa come conoscenza congetturale. Scopo del nostro intervento sarà infatti mostrare, attraverso l'analisi che per la prima volta sarà condotta sul testo, lo spaccato di una comunità conversazionale nella quale le linee di forza e le distinzioni che animano il dibattito si mostrano autonome rispetto alle posizioni storiche di cattolici e riformati. Nell’Exercitium, Duns Scoto è contrapposto ai tomisti e, con Agostino e Durando di san Porziano – che costituisce una fonte comune del dibattito secentesco insieme a Bonaventura, Aureolo, Suarez, Vazquez, Gregorio di Valencia, e in tale veste sarà ripreso di lì a poco da Leibniz -, è cooptato tra gli autori a sostegno della sua tesi. Lungi dall'essere un esercizio di eclettismo o la stanca ripetizione di formule scolastiche, lo scritto getta luce su un dibattito universitario nel quale le fonti sono usate non come auctoritates ma quale repertorio di teorie da smontare e rimontare; ad esse l’Exercitium attinge per soluzioni che si definiscono in relazione a finalità filosofiche o dottrinali, ma non politiche né confessionali. (shrink)

We argue that the main results of scientific papers may appropriately be published even if they are false, unjustified, and not believed to be true or justified by their author. To defend this claim we draw upon the literature studying the norms of assertion, and consider how they would apply if one attempted to hold claims made in scientific papers to their strictures, as assertions and discovery claims in scientific papers seem naturally analogous. We first use a case study of (...) William H. Bragg’s early 20th century work in physics to demonstrate that successful science has in fact violated these norms. We then argue that features of the social epistemic arrangement of science which are necessary for its long run success require that we do not hold claims of scientific results to their standards. We end by making a suggestion about the norms that it would be appropriate to hold scientific claims to, along with an explanation of why the social epistemology of science—considered as an instance of collective inquiry—would require such apparently lax norms for claims to be put forward. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics VII Aristotle describes akrasia as a disposition. Taking into account that it is a disposition, I argue that akrasia cannot be understood on an epistemological basis alone, i.e., it is not merely a problem of knowledge that the akratic person acts the ways he does, but rather one is akratic due to a certain kind of habituation, where the person is not able to activate the potential knowledge s/he possesses. To stress this point, I focus on the (...) gap between potential knowledge and its activation, whereby I argue that the distinction between potential and actual knowledge is at the center of the problem of akrasia. I suggest that to elaborate on this gap, we must go beyond the limits of Nicomachean Ethics to Metaphysics IX, where we find Aristotle’s discussion of the distinction between potentiality and actuality. I further analyze the gap between potential and actual knowledge by means of Aristotle’s discussion of practical syllogism, where I argue that akrasia is a result of a conflict in practical reasoning. I conclude my paper by stressing that for the akratic person the action is determined with respect to the conclusion of the practical syllogism, where the conclusion is produced by means of a ‘conflict’ between the universal opinion which is potential and the particular opinion which is appetitive. (shrink)

We argue that relating to myself as me provides, as such, a reason to care about myself: grasping that an event involves me, instead of another, makes it matter in a special way. Further, this self-concern is not simply a matter of seeing in myself some instrumental value for other ends. We use as our foil a recent skeptical challenge to this view offered in Setiya 2015. We think the case against self-concern is powered by unwarrantedly narrow construals of three (...) key notions. One is the notion of a first-personal way of relating to oneself. A narrow account of the first person in terms of special epistemic relations to oneself makes it easy to overlook a source of non-instrumental reasons of self-concern, located in the special relation a subject has to herself as agent. Two is the notion of what it is to be a reason. And, three, is the notion of self-concern itself. We show that the skeptical case rests in part on a slide towards neighbouring but distinct notions of egoism and selfishness. We also argue that Setiya’s notion of self-love, offered to capture the pre-theoretical intuition of self-concern, cannot do it justice. (shrink)

In two experiments (total N=693) we explored whether people are willing to consider paintings made by AI-driven robots as art, and robots as artists. Across the two experiments, we manipulated three factors: (i) agent type (AI-driven robot v. human agent), (ii) behavior type (intentional creation of a painting v. accidental creation), and (iii) object type (abstract v. representational painting). We found that people judge robot paintings and human painting as art to roughly the same extent. However, people are much less (...) willing to consider robots as artists than humans, which is partially explained by the fact that they are less disposed to attribute artistic intentions to robots. (shrink)

Genocide denialism is an understudied topic in the epistemic injustice scholarship; so are epistemic relations outside of the Euro-American context. This article proposes to bring the literature into contact with an underexplored topic in a ‘distant’ setting: Turkey. Here, I explore the ethical and epistemological implications of the Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide as a pervasive and systematic epistemic harm. Using an interdisciplinary methodology, I argue that a philosophical exploration of genocide denialism requires examining the role of institutions and (...) ideology in relation to the epistemic harm done by individual perpetrators. More specifically, I suggest that the individual, ideological, and institutional roots of genocide denialism constitute a regime of epistemic injustice in Turkey. (shrink)

The scholarship on Frantz Fanon’s theorization of violence is crowded with interpretations that follow the Arendtian paradigm of violence. These interpretations often discuss whether violence is instrumental or non-instrumental in Fanon’s work. This reading, I believe, is the result of approaching Fanon through Hannah Arendt’s framing of violence, i.e. through a binary paradigm of instrumental versus non-instrumental violence. Even some Fanon scholars who question Arendt’s reading of Fanon, do so by employing a similar binary logic, hence repeating the same either/or (...) paradigm of instrumental versus non-instrumental violence. I aim to challenge such interpretations of Fanon by demonstrating that in the context of anticolonial armed struggle in which Fanon writes, the either/or framework of the instrumental/non-instrumental binary of violence cannot fully capture his perspective. Violence can indeed be conceived as having both constructive and instrumental aspects. My argument is supported by Fanon’s corpus, including his 1960 Accra speech, “Why We Use Violence” in Alienation and Freedom. This piece, I suggest, together with Fanon’s other writings, poses a direct challenge to the Arendtian binary of violence. My analysis resists positioning the difference between Arendt and Fanon through the instrumental/non-instrumental binary. By using Judith Butler’s notion of “frame” I complicate their difference and argue Arendt’s framing of violence prevents her from apprehending Fanon and – more importantly – interpretations of Fanon based on this Arendtian frame of violence inevitably lead to misinterpretations. (shrink)

The primary aim of this discussion is to present a detailed case study of Descartes’ use of émotion in Les passions de l’ame and in his early writings leading up to that work. A secondary aim is to argue that while Descartes was innovative in suggesting that émotion might be a better keyword for the affective sciences than passion, he did not consistently follow his own advice. His innovation therefore failed in that regard, even though it did inspire later thinkers (...) to explore the distinction between “passion” and “emotion” in their own manner. (shrink)

This volume brings together essays by seminal figures and rising stars in the fields of animal ethics and moral theory to analyze and evaluate the moral status of non-human animals, with a special focus on the question of whether or not animals have moral rights. Though wide-ranging in many ways, these fourteen original essays and one reprinted essay direct significant attention to both the main arguments for animal rights and the biggest challenges to animal rights. This volume explores the question (...) of whether or not animals have moral rights through a number of different lenses, including classical deontology, libertarianism, commonsense morality, virtue ethics, and utilitarianism. The volume also addresses what are undoubtedly the most serious challenges to the strong animal rights position, which maintains that animals have moral rights equal in strength to the rights of humans, including challenges posed by rights nihilism, the ‘kind’ argument against animal rights, the problem of predation, and the comparative value of lives. In addition, the volume explores the practical import of animal rights both from a social policy standpoint and from the standpoint of personal ethical decisions concerning what to eat and whether or not to hunt animals. Unlike other volumes on animal rights, which focus primarily on the legal rights of animals, and unlike other anthologies on animal ethics, which tend to cover a wide variety of topics but only devote a few articles to each topic, the volume under consideration is focused exclusively on the question of whether or not animals have moral rights and the practical import of such rights. (shrink)

As COVID-19 spread, clinicians warned of mental illness epidemics within the coronavirus pandemic. Funding for digital mental health is surging and researchers are calling for widespread adoption to address the mental health sequalae of COVID-19. -/- We consider whether these technologies improve mental health outcomes and whether they exacerbate existing health inequalities laid bare by the pandemic. We argue the evidence for efficacy is weak and the likelihood of increasing inequalities is high. -/- First, we review recent trends in digital (...) mental health. Next, we turn to the clinical literature to show that many technologies proposed as a response to COVID-19 are unlikely to improve outcomes. Then, we argue that even evidence-based technologies run the risk of increasing health disparities. We conclude by suggesting that policymakers should not allocate limited resources to the development of many digital mental health tools and should focus instead on evidence-based solutions to address mental health inequalities. (shrink)

In his article “Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality,” Joshua Greene argues that the empirical findings of cognitive neuroscience have implications for ethics. Specifically, he contends that we ought to trust our manual, conscious reasoning system more than our automatic, emotional system when confronting unfamiliar problems; and because cognitive neuroscience has shown that consequentialist judgments are generated by the manual system and deontological judgments are generated by the automatic system, we ought to trust the former more than the latter when facing unfamiliar moral (...) problems. In the present article, I analyze one of the premises of Greene’s argument. In particular, I ask what exactly an unfamiliar problem is and whether moral problems can be classified as unfamiliar. After exploring several different possible interpretations of familiarity and unfamiliarity, I conclude that the concepts are too problematic to be philosophically compelling, and thus should be abandoned. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the theory of divine ideas of Walter Burley. The medieval common theory of divine ideas, developed by Augustine, was intended to provide an answer to the question of the order and intelligibility of the world. The world is rationally organized since God created it according to the models existing eternally in his mind. Augustine's theory, however, left open problems such as reconciling the principle of God's unity with the plurality of ideas, the way in which ideas (...) can or cannot be said to be eternal, their ontological status. Medieval authors discussed such questions until at least the late 14th century. By resorting to the semantic tool of connotation, Burley explains both in what way ‘idea' can signify the divine essence as much as the creatures, and in what sense we can say that God has thought them from eternity, without slipping into a necessitarian view that undermines the principle of divine freedom. Moreover, by envisaging the objective mode of being as the only mode of being of ideas, he explains in what way they truly differ from one another on the basis of their different conceptual contents. (shrink)

The dominant view on the ethics of cognitive enhancement (CE) is that CE is beholden to the principle of autonomy. However, this principle does not seem to reflect commonly held ethical judgments about enhancement. Is the principle of autonomy at fault, or should common judgments be adjusted? Here I argue for the first, and show how common judgments can be justified as based on a principle of service.

Country music has not gotten much attention in philosophy. I introduce two philosophical issues that country music raises. First, country music is simple. Some people might think that its simplicity makes country music worse; I argue that simplicity is aesthetically valuable. The second issue is country music’s ideal of authenticity; fans and performers think that country should be real or genuine in a particular way. But country music scholars have debunked the idea that country authenticity gets at anything real; widespread (...) ideas about country authenticity are rooted in a racist and fabricated picture of country music. In discussing these two issues, I highlight the importance of community in country music. (shrink)

We apply the analysis that we have developed over the course of several publications on the significance of ignorance for decision-making, especially in surrogate (and, thus, in political) contexts, to political decision-making, such as it has been, during the COVID-19 pandemic (see Scheall 2019; Crutchfield and Scheall 2019; Scheall and Crutchfield 2020; Scheall 2020). Policy responses to the coronavirus constitute a case study of the problem of policymaker ignorance. We argue that political responses to the virus cannot be explained by (...) assuming that the interests of policymakers were at loggerheads with those of their constituents at the beginning of the crisis. In order to explain the responses of policymakers, it is necessary to recognize the effects of relevant ignorance on their incentives to pursue different policy objectives. We discuss the knowledge that policymakers required at the start of the pandemic in order to deliberately realize the goal of limiting overall human suffering and the spontaneous forces that could have facilitated the realization of this goal. The problem of policymaker ignorance implies that policymakers have not earnestly pursued the goal of limiting overall suffering due to the novel coronavirus, but have repeatedly resorted to the pursuit of relatively less epistemically burdensome goals. The problem of policymaker ignorance explains why policymakers have focused primarily on limiting one kind of suffering – physical suffering due to the virus – and have mostly ignored related kinds of suffering, i.e., the economic, sociological, psychological, and physical suffering caused by policies to limit physical suffering from the virus. The problem of policymaker ignorance also helps to explain why policymakers relied on the relatively blunt instrument of economic lockdown rather than more focused protection policies, and why they continue to resort to lockdowns, despite the emerging scientific evidence of their ineffectiveness at mitigating physical suffering due to the virus. (shrink)

This chapter presents a series of experiments that elicit causal judgments using statements that do not include the verb "to cause". In particular, our interest is in exploring the extent to which previously observed effects of normative considerations on agreement with what we call "cause"-statements, i.e. those of the form "X caused ..." extend as well to those of the form "X V-ed Y", where V is a lexical causative. Our principal finding is that in many cases the effects do (...) not extend in this way, and moreover that the cases where we do find the same pattern are those where the causal verb used has a negative valence of its own. We draw two main conclusions from this finding. First, it reveals how the almost exclusive focus on "cause"-statements in the experimental study of causal judgment has led to findings that are unrepresentative of the full range of ordinary causal thinking, and provides a proof of concept as to how this thinking can be studied in its full variety. Second, the results of our experiments provide significant indirect support for the contention that the effect of moral considerations on agreement with "cause"-statements reflect the fact that these statements are most often used to assign responsibility for an event, and not just to describe the causal structure of what happened. It is not causal judgments in general that result from a process in which normative considerations play a role, but perhaps only those judgments that express a determination of moral responsibility. (shrink)

Prof. Harnam Dass had been a profound scholar of Sikhism. He was an eminent writer in a comparative study of religions, with several books to his credit. In the Foreword of the book, "Prof. Harnam Dass - A Profile," its editor Dr. Amrit Kaur Raina, provides a detailed description of the author's life, works, and legacy. He was born in 1905 at Daria Khan, Distt. Mianwali (now in Pakistan). Harnam Dass was a Sehajdhari Sikh. Despite facing severe financial adversity in (...) his early years, he was able to obtain M.A.(Persian), M.A. (Punjabi) and B.T. degrees by the sheer dint of his hard work and sustained efforts. Inspired by the writings of Sikh Gurus, he devoted his life to the dissemination of Gurmat and Punjabi language among the masses. Through his literary essays, as published in several reputed research journals, magazines, newspapers, and books, he created an indelible mark of scholarship on the minds of his readers. A votary of honest living, Prof. Dass led a life dedicated to the love of God and selfless service to society. His comparative expositions of Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, Vedanta and Islam were much appreciated by the many eminent scholars of his time. He was a true Karam yogi who had devoted his whole life to spread the message of the love of God, Gurmat, and service to all. (shrink)

Incoherence is usually regarded as a bad thing. Incoherence suggests irrationality, confusion, paradox. Incoherentism disagrees: incoherence is not always a bad thing, sometimes we ought to be incoherent. If correct, Incoherentism has important and controversial implications. It implies that rationality does not always require coherence. Dilemmism and Incoherentism both embrace conflict in epistemology. After identifying some important differences between these two ways of embracing conflict, I offer some reasons to prefer Incoherentism over Dilemmism. Namely, that Incoherentism allows us to deliberate (...) about what we ought to believe using ordinary epistemology, and it does a better job of accommodating the positive features of incoherence. (shrink)

A response to Graham Stevens’s response to Lugg, ‘Russell as a Precursor of Quine’ (Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly, nos. 128-129, pp. 9-21). Stevens challenges the argument of this paper that from 1912, if not earlier, Russell was “a naturalistically-minded epistemologist in the Quinean mould”. He maintains that to the contrary “Russell cannot be accurately characterized as an empiricist” and “Russell’s greatest influence on Quine’s naturalistic project did not stem from his epistemology but from his semantics”. In the present note it (...) is argued Stevens overlooks that Russell is in the empiricist camp as well as the naturalist camp and the empiricist elements of Russell’s philosophy are secondary to his naturalism. (shrink)

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Recent discussions of how axioms are extrinsically justified have appealed to abductive considerations: on such accounts, axioms are adopted on the basis that they constitute the best explanation of some mathematical data, or phenomena. In the first part of this paper, I set out a potential problem caused by the appeal made to the notion of mathematical explanation and suggest that it can be remedied once it is noted that all the justificatory work is done by appeal to the theoretical (...) virtues. In the second part of the paper, I appeal to the theoretical virtues account of axiom justification to provide an argument that judgements of theoretical virtuousness, and therefore of extrinsic justification, are subjective in a substantive sense. This tells against a recent claim by Penelope Maddy that such justification is “wholly objective”. (shrink)

The theoretical biologist Waddington drew attention to the damage to scientific progress by COWDUNG – the Conventional Wisdom of the Dominant Group. Despite Popper’s attack on what he called “the bucket theory of science”, that scientific knowledge accumulates incrementally, adding one fact after another, this is now conventional wisdom among biologists. Denis Noble is challenging not only the Neo-Darwinist orthodoxy dominating biology, but revealing the distortions of science produced by this bucket theory of science. The latter is central to understanding (...) the importance of his argument and for seeing the relevance of his work for biosemiotics. (shrink)

The ethics of technology has primarily focused on what values are and how they can be embedded in technologies through design. In this context, some work has been done to show the efficacy of a number of design approaches. However, existing studies have not clearly pointed out the ways in which design-for-values approaches can be used by design team managers to properly organize and use technologies in practice. This chapter attempts to fill this gap by discussing the value sensitive design (...) (VSD) approach as a useful means of co-designing technologies as a toolkit for existing workflow management, in this case, Agile. It will be demonstrated that VSD shows promise as a way of democratically designing technologies as well as fostering democratic technology policy innovation. (shrink)

Elobjetivoprincipaldelartículoeshacernotarladimensiónjurídico-normativadel problema del aborto, considerando que acentuar excesivamente su dimensión ético-moral conduce a una estéril contraposición que impide una discusión serena del abortoy de su dimensión irremediablemente pública. En este sentido, aún reconociéndole superspectiva moral, en el artículo se plantea la posibilidad de pensar el aborto como unaconducta que pueda reconducirse a un modelo de regulación jurídica “blando”, dondela perspectiva moral del legislador no adquiera las características de una moral común,igualparatodos,yque,porelcontrario,mediantelamodalidadjurídicadelpermiso,cadaindividuo ponga en acto su propia convicción moral. De ahí puede (...) surgir una legislaciónen la que el aborto no sea objeto ni de un deber jurídico ni de una prohibición: abortaro no abortar, en este modelo de regulación jurídica, son decisiones que los individuostoman con base en sus propias convicciones. (shrink)

The distinction of whether real or counterfactual history makes sense only post factum. However, modal history is to be defined only as ones’ intention and thus, ex-ante. Modal history is probable history, and its probability is subjective. One needs phenomenological “epoché” in relation to its reality (respectively, counterfactuality). Thus, modal history describes historical “phenomena” in Husserl’s sense and would need a specific application of phenomenological reduction, which can be called historical reduction. Modal history doubles history just as the recorded history (...) of historiography does it. That doubling is a necessary condition of historical objectivity including one’s subjectivity: whether actors’, ex-ante or historians’, post factum. The objectivity doubled by ones’ subjectivity constitute “hermeneutical circle”. (shrink)

In many different ontological debates, anti-arbitrariness considerations push one towards two opposing extremes. For example, in debates about mereology, one may be pushed towards a maximal ontology (mereological universalism) or a minimal ontology (mereological nihilism), because any intermediate view seems objectionably arbitrary. However, it is usually thought that anti-arbitrariness considerations on their own cannot decide between these maximal or minimal views. I will argue that this is a mistake. Anti-arbitrariness arguments may be used to motivate a certain popular thesis in (...) the philosophy of mathematics that rules out the maximalist view in many different ontological debates. (shrink)

il verbo latino «desiderare» deriva dal composto latino della particella de – che può indicare una mancanza oppure un’azione distruttiva – con il termine sidus, sideris, che significa "stella" e il plurale sidera che significa "stelle". Quindi il desiderio non ha a che fare con una singola stella, ma con un insieme di stelle. Perché? Gli antichi collegavano idealmente nel cielo le stelle fino a formare le costellazioni. e queste erano necessarie non solo per orientarsi ad es. nel mare, ma (...) anche a livello esistenziale (l’astrologia). Da qui il doppio senso della parola de-Sidera: 1) il sentimento di una «mancanza» di costellazioni, cioè di punti di orientamento; 2) il «de-costellare» nel senso del tentativo di distruggere (de- come nel caso di «de-costruire») la costellazione che imprigiona, come un destino, la mia esistenza attuale, negli affanni della routine quotidiana. (shrink)

That Wilfrid Sellars claims that the framework of persons is not a descriptive framework, but a normative one is about as well known as any claim that he makes. This claim is at the core of the famous demand for a synoptic image that closes, “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” makes its appearance at key moments in the grand argument of, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” and is the capstone of Sellars’ engagement with Kant in, Science and (...) Metaphysics. Whereas mere things can be subject to ought-to-be rules—e.g. a clock ought to chime on the hour—to be a person, as Sellars understands it, is to be subject to ought-to-do rules—e.g. one ought to wind one’s clocks to chime on the hour. Prima facie, though, there is more to being a person than just being subject to ought-to-do rules. For example, on at least some common ways of using ‘person’ to be a person is to have a unified consciousness, i.e. to be a single subject of a manifold of experience persisting through time. Arguably, that is what Kant takes a person to be. What I hope to show here is that it is what Sellars takes a person to be too. I.e. the exciting twist here is that as Sellars sees it being a single subject of experience persisting through time is being subject to a particular kind of ought-to-do rules, namely, those concepts-qua-inferential-rules that are the means by which we represent the world of causally-related objects existing in space and persisting through time. I take Sellars’ reasons for holding this set of theses to be essentially Kantian, and so my procedure for explicating them will be to trace a single philosophical thread through both Kant’s and Sellars’ thinking surrounding these issues. I begin with the historical problematic to which Kant’s Transcendental Deduction is intended as an answer. By what right does one apply the pure a priori concepts of the understanding? As the necessary means for representing the analytic unity of apperception, i.e. for representing oneself as the single subject of experience persisting through time. That leads to a consideration of the question of what the temporally-discursive experiences are of which one is supposed to be the single subject, and what the nature of the relation is of these experiences to such a subject. Here Sellars provides the answer. The question is ill formed. There is no relation of experiences to a subject because experiences are not themselves things. Rather, ‘an experience’ is a nominalization of the verb ‘experiencing’, which is itself a description of the act of a person. That thesis, then, brings us squarely to the question of what the framework of persons is, and why Sellars is so confident that it is an ineliminable feature of any future iteration of the synoptic image of the world. The answer to the latter question is that descriptive images themselves (scientific or manifest) are constituted by the rules that govern them, and it is only persons that can be subject to such rules. So, in the end, we return to Kant’s claim in the Transcendental Deduction that our representation of a world of causally-related objects existing in space and persisting through time is the means by which one represents oneself as the single subject of experience persisting through time. The descriptions that the scientific image provides are only possible, and necessary, because of what Kant would call their “ultimate principle”: the framework of persons. (shrink)

Property-identical divine-command theory (PDCT) is the view that being obligatory is identical to being commanded by God in just the way that being water is identical to being H2O. If these identity statements are true, then they express necessary a posteriori truths. PDCT has been defended in Robert M. Adams (1987) and William Alston (1990). More recently Mark C. Murphy (2002) has argued that property-identical divine-command theory is inconsistent with two well-known and well-received theses: the free-command thesis and the supervenience (...) thesis. I show that Murphy's argument is vitiated by mistaken assumptions about the substitutivity of metaphysical identicals in contexts of supervenience. The free-command thesis and the supervenience thesis therefore pose no serious threat to PDCT. (Published Online August 11 2004). (shrink)

“O estudo de questões jurídicas, em seus aspectos filosóficos, é um modo de compreender um dos fenômenos mais completos da vida humana, da vida em sociedade, embora os aspectos legais sejam diferentes em cada grupo social. Nesse sentido, Filosofia e Direito: estudos é uma contribuição que serve para aprofundar a presença jurídica de bases filosóficas. É preciso recordar que as distinções servem para a compreensão humana e para melhor entender a unidade dos fenômenos. Enquanto a ciência estuda os aspectos dogmáticos (...) do Direito, a filosofia estuda os fundamentos ontológicos, epistemológicos e éticos do Direito. O explícito pressupõe o implícito. Além dessas distinções disciplinares, inúmeros outros ângulos do problema podem ser examinados. Uma prova disso é a natureza dos ensaios apresentados nesse livro como resultados de estudos programados e sistemáticos. Os autores dos ensaios, aqui publicados, portanto, não excluem outras investigações e nem sequer se pensam completos.” -/- Jayme Paviani. (shrink)

Review of Oskari Kuusela and Marie McGinn, eds. , The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein. Comments on some of the articles in this huge collection.

This paper is about the principle that success entails ability, which I call Success. I argue the status of Success is highly puzzling: when we focus on past instances of actually successful action, Success is very compelling; but it is in tension with the idea that true ability claims require an action be in the agent's control. I make the above tension precise by considering the logic of ability. I argue Success is appealing because it is classically equivalent to two (...) genuinely valid inferences, which I call Past Success and Can't-Entails-Won't; but also that Success itself has counterexamples. I show how to invalidate Success while validating Past Success and Can't-Entails-Won't by connecting the meaning of ‘can’ to facts about what is settled or open. I define an operator W with features attributed to ‘will’ in the literature on future contingents. I then give a conditional analysis of ability ascriptions stated with W-conditionals, where "S can A" says, roughly, there’s some action available to S such that if S does it, then W(S A). I show this semantics invalidates Success while still explaining its appeal. (shrink)

Monistic grounding says that there is one fundamental ground, while pluralistic grounding says that there are many such grounds. Grounding necessitarianism says that grounding entails, but is not reducible to, necessitation, while grounding contingentism says that there are at least some cases where grounding does not entail necessitation. Pluralistic grounding necessitarianism is a very popular position, but accidental generalizations, such as ‘all solid gold spheres are less than one mile in diameter’, pose well-known problems for this view: the many fundamental (...) grounds of such generalizations do not necessitate them. Though there is a straightforward response to this objection, I argue that it fails. Thus the objection from accidental generalizations stands, and proponents of pluralistic grounding necessitarianism face the following dilemma: either give up pluralistic grounding, or give up necessitarianism. (shrink)

Diversity in Indonesia raises the tolerance problem. The research goal to find guidance and counseling services right to develop character tolerance. The goals of this research is developing of models group gudance with folklore methode as alternative developing tolerance character. This research use Research and development as an approach. Research and development steps include preliminary study, development hypothetical group guidance model-based folklore, validation of expert judgment and expert practitioners, experimental test form group guidance model- based folklore on a limited basis (...) — descriptive qualitative and descriptive quantitative in research analysis. Group guidance services consisted of 8-9 students from Yogyakarta City, Bantul Regency, Sleman Regency, Kulonpogo Regency, and Gunungkidul Regency (Indonesia Country The result from this research that group guidance with folklore methode can incrase the tolerance character of students. The result of the limited trial appears that there was a change of condition before pre-test with an average of 109 and an increase of 117.9 after post-test in implementation of group guidance service with folklore method. The T-test results also reveal significant changes from before to after the significance of 0.000 (<0.05). (shrink)

They are research studies on the intersection of several fields in the humanities and social sciences, namely social anthropology, linguistics, folkloristics, applied Bayesian statistics, and cultural studies (see the references). All these three studies have been conducted by the Hanoi-based ISR research team at Phenikaa University, Ha Dong district, Hanoi, Vietnam.

O presente artigo tratará, no pensamento de Nietzsche, do cotejo entre a concepção de expressão musical e a noção de esquecimento de si. O filósofo, assim, a elabora a partir de uma interpretação peculiar da tragédia grega, da qual absorve as alegorias de Apolo e Dionísio, e finda por relacionar a música com sua concepção mais ampla de arte. Além disso, o artigo tece relações entre a mencionada formulação de Nietzsche, as concepções de Gênio Criador em Schopenhauer e de Obra (...) de Arte Total em Wagner. (shrink)

Curry’s chapter “In the Fiat of Dreams” makes two strong claims about the definition of “black male” and the value of idealistic ethics for black men. Depending on what he means by the analyticity of “black male”, he either understates his desired conclusion for the severity of the black male’s condition, overstates his conclusion in rejecting idealistic ethics, or ends up in contradiction within the “world” or “society” he is talking about. Given the most charitable reading of his argument, I (...) show that he requires further explication, or merely a different argument, in order to make the claims that he intends to offer. (shrink)

I sketch out a specific form of vice epistemology that I call critical character epistemology.

In here, philosophical-literate thinking on the way is mainly tried. On one side, making a philosophical analysis of Heraclitus’ fragment 60 is aimed. The different views on what Heraclitus might have meant in this article which is generally translated as the way up and the way down are one and the same are examined. On the other side, with a reading of Robert Frost’s famous poem of Road Not Taken, it has been tried whether a phenomenological interpretation of the way (...) based on passenger is possible or not. It has been researched if there is a common ground or not where this fragment and poem -which exhibit two different views on the way- have met each other. This fragment and poem has been linked together on the context of essentiality of the passenger for the way. (shrink)

In this article, some theories about evolutionary progress of human mind are examined and criticised. Through a comparative reading of these theories -which are sometimes contradictory to each other- it has been tried to present the common missing parts of these theories. The meaning of these theories for philosophy has been thought and the presupposition of linearity in these theories is criticised. The relation of the concept of emotion with the terms like cognition, apprehension, comprehension, intellect, self-awareness, consciousness -which stand (...) forward within these theories- is emphasized. Through the visual cliff experiment, it has been attempted to clarify this relation. (shrink)

In this article, it has been aimed to examine Nietzsche’s main critique towards different understandings of morals in his era. With this criticism, it is aimed to integrally understand the opinions -which are articulated directly or metaphorically- towards morals which have been encountered. In here, while keeping in mind the difference between the concepts of immoralism and amoralism, Nietzsche’s views are interpreted. Being parallel to that aim mentioned above, it has been investigated if there is a thinking in Nietzsche which (...) can be seen as a kind of understanding of morals (maybe as the understanding of morals without morals) or not. And finally, it has been thought that if Nietzsche’s views on morals have any value for the 21st century and upcoming 22nd century human or not, whether there’s something left to learn for this human from his critiques or not. (shrink)

In this article, it has been searched if the language and consciousness have a co-origin or not. This origin of language and consciousness problem which draws interest in areas especially like anthropology, biology and evolutionary linguistics and evolutionary psychology is tried to be handled from a philosophical point of view. By presenting the theories about the relation between language and consciousness, theories that are well-accepted but contradicted to another from certain aspects, a thinking -which tries to go beyond this contradiction- (...) about the origin of language and consciousness has been attempted. With paying regard to different approaches represented by names like Piaget, Vygotsky, Chomsky, Whorf, an investigation has been made about what the meaning of language and consciousness having a not historical but elementarily philosophical co-origin can mean. It has been aimed to present a compiling point of view with this investigation. (shrink)

In this article, the difference between human and animal in philosophy is mainly handled. This difference is thought over the concept of “the other” and Heidegger’s phenomenological distinction between human and animal. With respect to especially the views of Derrida and Levinas regarding to this matter, it has been attempted to exhibit this difference. Therefore, the two approaches -which were represented as the opposition of Derrida and Levinas- have been tried to clarify. After this, as a new approach to this (...) opposition, the concept of “embrace” is philosophically problematized. This examination which also can be read under the main heading of philosophy of body makes especially the dorsal and more generally the whole back surface of human body subject matter of philosophical interpretation. The concepts of dorsal and embracing which can also be considered from the angle of phenomenology of the body- are approached from evolutionary and psychologically. With this, the concept of embracing deepens the thought of being-together-with-others in a specific context. A special relation is constructed between the meaning that is giving to embracing and rubbing of the back and existing. (shrink)

This article mainly aims to make an examination over the holy. It has been inquired into how something being ascribed holy can have a meaning in philosophy. As the article's research area, the differences in both opinion and execution which have later divided Christianity into two as Catholic and Orthodox Churches have been selected. The separation of these two churches under the subject titles such as Filioque controversy, the idea of First Among Equals (primas inter pares), and ritual of Transubstantiation (...) have also shaped how they perceived and thought the holy. With these divergences being investigated, it has been tried to present how much of a share these had in giving meaning for the holy. It has been labored to manifest the role of these two Churches' -which belong to and come from the same celestial tradition- divergences in the metamorphosis and paradigm shift that the holy underwent. For the last, through the Church Fathers' opinions and views which have been seen related to subject matter, with moving beyond the divergences, it has been searched whether there is a possibility of meeting on the common ground or not . (shrink)

When humanism is thought, especially within the borders of 20th century philosophy, one of the things that first comes to mind is the statements which have occurred in 1950s between Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre, can be named as Heidegger-Sartre Controversy on Humanism and mainly based on two texts. Sartre, in one of his speeches, builds an essential connection between humanism and existentialism and in here he defines Heidegger as an existentialist like himself. In return, Heidegger, probably as a criticism (...) to Sartre's attribution to him, told about his thoughts on humanism within the expanded version of one of his earlier letters. By this controversy the context and content humanism had been expanded, the understanding of humanism is deepened. The aim of this article is to manifest if there are some things that the controversy between Heidegger and Sartre could contribute to the terms -as a problematic humanism has nowadays- like post-humanism, trans-humanism, meta-humanism, super-humanism, alter-humanism whose terminological meanings aren't quite well-defined. It is to investigate if there are any solutions that humanism -which is being shaped again and obtaining new contexts through these terms- could gain by this controversy against this current terminology problem. (shrink)

In this work, it has been mainly aimed to make a research on origin, meaning and context of two terms [Apophasis and Aphairesis]. These two terms which have an important place within the negative theology that has been thought explicitly appeared first with Pseudo-Dionysos Areopagita –but if required, it can be started in Plotinus, Aristotle, Plato or Parmenides– in history of philosophy [terms which also have been a subject to a misunderstanding, to a problem due to their being understood as (...) synonymous with each other], are tried to be traced back within Greek thinking, culture and especially in Aristotle. With putting forth which sense and context these two terms were used and understood in Aristotle, the meaning and context changes these two terms had historically have been tried to be revealed. (shrink)

In this text presented here, it has been tried to Show the difference between Heidegger’s first and second era understanding of language. In his first era, to manifest Heidegger’s understanding of language, outlines of Being and Time has been discussed and concerned chapter is read carefully. To manifest his understanding of language in second era, the work of On the Way to the Language has been taken as a base. With this comparative study, it has been tried to shown the (...) change that “language” has undergone in Heidegger philosophy. (shrink)

The article which is presented here includes an analysis of concept of “care” which mostly has found itself a place in history of philosophy in different forms. Even though thinkers who gave a place to this concept in their works, the main interest is about what Herder and Heidegger said. It has been tried to show how concept of “care” is understood throughout the history of philosophy. Lastly, it has been tried if there is a possible and genuine interpretation.

The problem of non-acceptance of philosophy in Arab Culture is a complex one and it is worthy of study and analysis. This problem relates to the nature of the composition of Arab Culture on the one hand, and that of philosophy itself on the other. With reference to the composition of Arab culture, there are numerous contributory elements that inform Arab culture today; some of which are Arabic in and others of which are foreign and only came to the Arab (...) habitat lands since the arrival of the Islamic religion. Arab culture is derived from a rich history comprising a number of Arab states that produced a multi-faceted and resplendent civilization, extending from Mesopotamia to the Nile Delta and Saba and Hamer. All of these independent civilizations contributed to Arab culture. In addition, Islam has also made a significant contribution towards polishing and entering all cultures before and after it extended throughout the world. In Arabic culture a critical trend arose in opposition to philosophy, contradicting the pattern in former Arabic civilizations, it is based on political religion as a foundation from which to attack and destroy philosophy. The second factor linked to the unaccepted nature of philosophy in Arab culture originates from philosophy itself. As is known by philosophers, the originality and creativity of philosophy first manifested in Ancient Greece. Moreover, the Greeks differed from other nations in many respects. For instance; 1) Multiplicity of religions, law and social system. 2) Political system, they created the first pattern of democracy in the world, which became the most basic of all democratic systems. 3) Social structure consisting of Whites, Slaves and Barbarians. 4) Customs and traditions, they have different views regarding women, slavery, citizenship and freedom of though. 5) Also the Greek nation differs from other nations in the high number of philosophical scholars that emerged during its 1200 year era of civilization. This research will analyze both the nature of contemporary Arabic Culture and the tradition of Greek Philosophy to ascertain the factors informing the unacceptability of Greek Philosophy in Arabic Culture. (shrink)

The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature.

In this paper I propose an approach to thinking about religion and politics that should inform how we think about liberalism and religion. I also consider how the conception of political authority defended by the prominent Muslim public intellectual Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im is a paradigm example of liberalism. In Part I I consider two approaches to religion and politics. According to the reductionist view, whether values that are central to a religious tradition can be reconciled to liberalism is more a (...) matter of doctrine than practice. By contrast a non-reductionist approach emphasizes that the relationship between political and religious values is influenced by a number of variables in addition to religious doctrine, including ethnicity, historical memory, political economy, and local politics. On this view, the path between religious and political convictions is anything but a straight line. In Part II I examine central arguments in An-Na’im’s work that are central to his version of liberalism, with a focus on liberty of conscience and religious freedom. To illustrate An-Na’im’s liberalism I focus on examples of claims about morality and theology, politics, and history. I conclude in Part III by considering how An-Na’im’s position is one example of what we would expect from a non-reductionist understanding of religion and politics. (shrink)

This paper argues that a fairly widespread approach to hermeneutical injustice—what I call the lacuna-centered analysis—is incomplete. This analysis fails to capture an important species of hermeneutical injustice which does not result from lacunae or a lack of hermeneutical resources, but instead from the overabundance of distorting and oppressive concepts which function to crowd-out, defeat, or pre-empt the application of an available and more accurate hermeneutical resource. In its place, I begin to develop a more expansive framework for theorizing about (...) hermeneutical injustice. The expansive framework better respects the complex relationship between hermeneutical resources and the background social and political contexts in which they are implemented. (shrink)